Ovid

'You want to tell me how you tracked the guy down?' I said.

'It was a fluke.' Scylax frowned. 'Couple of days ago this friend of mine gets involved with a knifeman outside the Shrine of Libera and busts the hilt of his dagger on the guy's front teeth. He goes into the nearest metalsmith's to get it fixed and guess who's swinging the hammer?'

'Your friend didn't give himself away, I hope.'

'Nah.' Scylax spat into the roadway. 'He's subtle, old Bassus. Just got his knife fixed, paid for it and left. We won't be expected, don't you worry.'

We'd passed the spice sellers now and were into the perfume makers' stretch. I stopped at one of the better class booths and poked about a bit, but there wasn't anything Perilla would touch with a ten foot pole. Scylax bought a tub of bright yellow cream from a guy squatting on the pavement.

'Piss-awful stuff, but it keeps off the flies when you sweat.' He passed it over. 'You want to try some?'

I took a cautious sniff and nearly threw up.

'What the hell is that?'

'Jupiter knows. Guy calls it Gorilla Juice.'

'I'll take the flies any day.' I passed the box back. 'What did you say Big Fritz's name was?'

'Agron. Bassus got that much. The guy's an Illyrian, like we thought.' Scylax stopped suddenly. 'Okay, I've done my bit, boy, and now it's your turn. Let's take some time out for explanations.'

I sighed. 'Look, I can't tell you, okay? Not yet. Later, maybe, when this thing starts to make more sense. But not now.'

Scylax shook his head and carried on walking.

'You're in trouble all right,' he said. 'Right up to the eyeballs.'

We were well into the Subura by now and I could see the Shrine of Libera up ahead, half hidden in the ramshackle chaos of the hawkers' booths and the swarming crowds of Rome's poorest citizens. No wonder Scylax hadn't been able to track the guy down. Even leaving numbers aside, the Subura's a law to itself. If you're part of it you can disappear like water into sand, and it'll lie itself blue to hide you.

'That's Metalsmiths' Row on the left,' Scylax said. 'Agron's shop should be about half way down.'

We found it, and it was closed. Seriously closed. Heavy wooden shutters had been pulled across the entrance and fixed with a metal padlock.

'Maybe he just took the day off.' Scylax sounded guilty.

'Oh, sure! Like for his grandmother's funeral. We're just through with the Floralia, for Jupiter's sake! Who the hell takes a day off at this time of year?'

'You looking for Agron?'

I turned round. A little fat guy had come out of the cookshop next door holding a slathery bunch of what I hoped were sausage skins.

'Yeah. Know where he is, friend?'

'Your name Corvinus?'

Shit. 'Yeah, that's me.'

The guy gave me a look like I'd just sodomised his pet cat.

'He said you might be round after your friend called to get his knife fixed.' So much for Scylax's Bassus. Sure, he was subtle all right. Subtle as a ton of concrete. 'Said to tell you he was sorry to've missed you but that he'll be in touch if your nose is still troubling you. That make sense?'

Despite myself, I laughed.

'What's funny?' Scylax demanded.

'Nothing. Private joke.' The guy might be an enemy but he had style. Style and brains. Ovid's last name was Naso, The Nose, so it was a double pun.

'You know where he went?' Scylax turned back to the sausage-seller.

'Nah.' The man disappeared back into his shop. Scylax was going in after him but I pulled him back.

'Let's take this easy,' I said. 'You'll scare him off.'

'I'll feed the little fucker to his own customers. They won't know the difference.'

'Easy!' I pushed past him and went into the shop. The guy was already stuffing the skins with a disgusting mess from a cracked bowl. His shop smelt of burnt grease, cheap olive oil and long-dead meat. 'You sell them, friend, or just make them?'

The man scowled. 'Blood puddings, meatballs or Lucanian sausage?'

'Real Lucanian sausage? All the way from Luca?'

The fat fingers gave the filled tube a vicious twist. 'You on the stage or something?'

'Okay. Just grill us up a couple of your best, right?' I remembered the Sunshine Boys waiting patiently outside. 'Make it a dozen.'

I took a gold piece from my pouch and threw it on the table. The shopkeeper's eyes went straight to it, but he kept his hands in the bowl.

'Sausages're two coppers each,' he said. His eyes never left the coin. He wouldn't make that much, I knew, in a month.

'So we're rich mugs,' I said. 'Now tell us about Agron. And don't forget the sausages because my lads outside get nervous when they're hungry, okay?'

'You're wasting your time.' He reached up to the hook above his head, pulled down a string of sausages and laid them on the grease-blackened grill. 'I don't know nothing.'

'Come on, Corvinus, let me handle this.' Scylax spoke quietly. He didn't move a muscle but the fat cook showed the whites of his eyes. Scylax has that effect on people.

'Last chance, sunshine,' I said. 'Before I let my friend here ask the questions. What's your name anyway?'

'Tarquin.'

'Fuck!' Scylax muttered.

I ignored him. 'Right, Tarquin. Take it slow and easy and just tell us what you know.'

'Look, I've told you, I don't know nothing!'

'That's right. Start at the beginning, take us through the middle and stop when you come to the end. The guy's Illyrian, right?'

The fat man sighed.

'Yeah,' he said. 'Comes from Singidunum, wherever the hell that is.'

'On the Danube, west of Sirmium.'

'Yeah. Right. Whatever. If you say so. He came here first about nine, ten years back. Maybe twelve, I can't remember. Patron bought him the business and set him up nicely.'

'Who's his patron?'

'How the hell should I know? You purple-striped bastards're all the same.'

'Watch your mouth,' Scylax grunted.

'So he's an ex-slave?' I said.

Tarquin eased the tip of a spatula beneath the half-cooked sausages and flipped them over with a deft twist of the wrist. 'Nah. Soldier. Patron used to be a military man out that way. When he got his discharge he tagged along with the guy to Rome.'

Jupiter Best and Greatest! 'You ever see him? The patron, I mean?'

'Nah. What'd one of your lot be doing round here? Present company excepted, of course.'

'Agron ever mention his name?'

'Nah. And I never asked neither.'

'He's still around?'

'The patron? Search me. Maybe he is, maybe he isn't.' He reached into a crock and pulled out two greasy, stale-looking loaves. 'Maybe he's pushing up the daisies someplace. How many plates you want?'

'We'll take them with us. That's all you can tell us?'

'That's it.' He picked up the gold piece and slipped it into the pouch round his waist. 'Enjoy your meal, gents.'

We fed the bread and sausages to the Sunshine Boys, who wolfed them down as if they hadn't seen food for a month. I thought they'd toss their guts up on the way home but they didn't. Gauls must have cast-iron stomachs. Or maybe they just like five-day-old dog.

So Big Fritz had been a soldier. And his patron had been a military man who'd held a command ‘out that way’. Although it was tantalising that particular gobbet of information didn't get me very far. ‘Out that way’ to a guy like Tarquin could mean anywhere from the Rhine to Thrace. Or even at a push South Spain or Egypt. And the ‘military man’ could've been anyone from Tiberius down to Pomponius the decurion. He could even be my father…

I dropped Scylax off back at the gym and went home. I didn't go round to Perilla's that evening. Bathyllus couldn't find any oysters and anyway I didn't have the energy.

Varus to Himself

We have been marching all day. The weather is worsening, the road is no more than a track. The attack should have come this morning, at the edge of the forest, but there has been nothing, there has been nothing, only minor skirmishing between my outriders and an enemy who slip back into the trees like ghosts and draw them on to their deaths…